Urban Grimoire: The Review Spell Revisited

Magic has been described as the art and science of causing change in accordance with will, and all acts have been defined as magical acts. I have posted here before about the remarkable magical strength of leaving reviews on the internet. Whether good or bad, your review does have real power online. Now I'm aware that businesses often manipulate their image by posting fake reviews. However, I'm also of the opinion that the public are far more clued up on identifying fake reviews, false information, and what have you, than we used to be. The problem with filling the internet with false information is that people get wise to it. For example, bot comments on social media are now met with a chorus calling them a bot. 

Actually, I quite like to call commenters bots when they're obviously not. If they've left a particularly cruel, inflammatory, or hate-filled comment, the explosion which follows calling them a bot is bound to be good.

But to the subject of the post. It was about the management company of the leasehold flats I live in. The utterly incompetent directors don't involve the other leaseholders and have, for the ten years I have lived here, used the same individuals to do the day to day management, but they've moved through several companies in that time.

Clearly, there's something wrong there, and if I was hugely rich they would be in the tribunal, but there is no hope of creating a mass action out of the 460 flats and there's legally a limit to the power leaseholders can do.

But under the last management company there was a peak of dissatisfaction among the residents of several buildings they manage and people used the power they had, by leaving bad reviews.

And they were absolutely atrocious. If I say that mine was one of the more restrained ones, it should give an idea of how dozens of people were not holding back. They left comments which really can only be described as libellous if they're not true, such as accusing them of running off with people's money and other crimes. My own contribution was to comment on how to take them to the tribunal.

And I'm delighted to say that my efforts mean the company's Google reviews are now headed up by the picture which illustrates this post. 🐴 As I commented in my last post, laughing and ridicule is a really good way of moving power around, and that is pure witchcraft.

Of course I knew the company was rubbish, but this was confirmed by the way they dealt with this barrage of critical comments. They didn't even know or care, that what you do when your professional reputation is assaulted like that is to be pink and fluffy in public and leave sympathetic replies asking the commenter to contact you (see, I could work in comms), but be hard as nails with threatening solicitors' letters behind the scenes. 

What they actually did was leave obviously fictional comments which were even funnier. One of them described two of the staff as the Mulder and Scully of house hunting. I personally edited my review wondering which of the two was so spooky that nobody would work with them and which has been impregnated by aliens.

Their online presence is ruined, and it's hilarious. They've even stopped posting on their social media because of the comments they're getting.

Last week, to nobody's surprise, the leaseholders got letters to say they've sold the property management part of their business to someone else and that's who will be looking after the building from now on. Job done.

Agony Hound: AITA for Faking a Haunted House To Get My Boyfriend to Move Out Because He Refused To Leave After We Broke Up?

High time I intruded and ruined someone else's life again in my role of agony aunt, and this one's a beauty.

(My source for this was somewhere on Tumblr).

The Hound says:

Hon, this isn't ethically questionable. The default position, unless you're exceptionally good friends and have agreed this in advance, is that the one who doesn't own the place moves out when you break up. If someone is clingy/inadequate enough not to do this, they're breaking a major rule of social engagement and all bets are off.

Also, your method of getting rid of him is worthy of a witch, never mind an Oscar. Well done, I couldn't have done it myself. In chaos magic an essential banishing ritual is to laugh at things and this definitely works with taking the piss as well.

Another interesting aspect is the ferret. Perhaps it's a good idea to ask a prospective partner about their ferret, see what they say and demand to see it if they claim to possess one.

What *is* being an asshole is to fake a haunting for years simply to frighten someone, as Noel Gallagher famously did for years to his brother Liam:

The Mirror​ has reported this morning that Noel Gallagher has tormented his brother for years over his fear of ghosts, essentially… by moving furniture about in his bedroom to shit him up.

In Noel’s words, “If we were ever anywhere remotely spooky, we’d tell Liam that the house was haunted, particularly his bedroom.”

“When he’d get up in the morning and go and have his breakfast, someone would go in and turn the pictures back to front, or fucking move a lamp beside his bed across the other side of the room. He’d arrive pale: ‘Have you been in my fucking room?’ ‘No, why?’ ‘You’ve been in my room, because now the fucking lamp is in the toilet.’ ‘No way, fucking hell. Wow.’”

The report also notes that the brothers, in their rock’n’roll heyday (or, “When they were constantly off their tits”), suspected bizarre conspiracies were surrounding them during the 1996 sessions for Oasis’ third album ​Be Here Now​​, which took place at The Farm in Surrey. Noel explained: “Because it’s on a farm, there’s lots of farm people knocking around, we’d always be suspiciously looking out their window, admittedly high as a fucking kite thinking, ‘Sheep’s got a camera. Don’t like the look of that pig.’” Source